Analysis of Taste. 81 



modern writers. The third source of pleasure from the perception 

 of the visible world may be termed the melody of colours, which will 

 be shown to coincide with melody of sounds: this circumstance may 

 also accompany the picturesque, and will add to the pleasure it affords. 

 The fourth source of pleasure from the perception of visible objects is 

 derived from the previous association of other pleasurable trains of 

 ideas with certain forms, colours, combinations, or successions of 

 them. Whence the beautiful, sublime, romantic, melancholic, and 

 other emotions, which have not acquired names to express them. We 

 may add, that all these four sources of pleasure from perceptions are 

 equally applicable to those of sounds as of sights. 



I. Novelty or infrequency of visible objects. 



The first circumstance, which suggests an additional pleasure in 

 the contemplation of visible objects, besides that of simple perception, 

 arises from their novelty or infrequency; that is from the unusual 

 combinations or successions of their forms or colours. From this 

 source is derived the perpetual cheerfulness of youth, and the want of 

 it is liable to add a gloom to the countenance of age. It is this which 

 produces variety in landscape compared with the common course of 

 nature, an intricacy which incites investigation, and a curiosity which 

 leads to explore the works of nature. Those who travel into foreign 

 regions instigated by curiosity, or who examine and unfold the intri- 

 cacies of sciences at home, are led by novelty; which not only sup- 

 plies ornament to beauty or to grandeur, but adds agreeable surprise 

 to the point of the epigram, and to the double meaning of the pun, 

 and is courted alike by poets and philosophers. 



It should be here premised, that the word Novelty, as used in these 

 pages, admits of degrees or quantities, some objects, or the ideas 

 excited by them, possessing more or less novelty, as they are more or 

 less unusual. Which the reader will please to attend to, as we have 

 used the word Infrequency of objects, or of the ideas excited by 

 them, to express the degrees or quantities of their novelty. 



The source, from which is derived the pleasure of novelty, is a 



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